Simple Guide to Movie Maker

By Peter Huang

Opening up movie makerThis is what you should see when you open Windows Movie Maker.

Creating your video

• Depending on situation, there are two ways:• A) Have previously created footage (filmed

footage, downloaded clip from youtube)• B) Create or copy images from the internet

• To add them to your project, simply drag and drop inside the dotted box area on the right or click the dotted box area to open the file(s).

ExampleHere is an example after you have dragged and dropped or opened a video clip or image.

Splitting or trimming a video

This is useful if you want to set a start/end point as you might have “3,2,1,… cut” before the scene starts, or if there are unnecessary bloopers at the end of a clip. Split will split the video into two parts at the current paused moment, and trim will remove the end of the clip (start will remove previous footage, end will remove later footage). Please note that the video needs to be paused.

Speeding up a video

In the speed drop down menu, you can select the speed of the footage. I have split the footage into two portions, and by changing the speed at this paused moment, it will only affect the portion of the footage it is in, not the entire video! If you have a 1 minute clip but want 0s-20s to be 4x, make sure to split the video at 20s, then apply 4x between 0s-20s!

Volume of the footage

In the top part of this picture you can see a pop-out volume bar to adjust the volume of the video. Just like speed, it only affects the segment of the video the paused moment is in, NOT the entire video unless the video is only one un-split footage. Sometimes there might be unnecessary noise in the video that you don’t want or if you are planning to put music over the video, it is best to mute the volume of the footage.

Animations Bar

The animations bar allows you to select the type of transition you want that starts off into this footage. You will see the animation at the beginning of this footage segment.

Examples include:

FadeShatterSwipesDiamondsRotationsBlurs

Visual Effects

In the visual effects bar, you can select how you want the footage to be seen visually. For example, the third box from the left will turn your footage into a cartoon-like motion, while others will make it look more orange, cinema-like, or even in shades of blue, red, or grey (black and white).

If you click brightness, a pop-up bar will pop up allowing you to manipulate the brightness of the clip.

Project Tab

The project bar is pretty straight forward. It allows screen aspect ratio adjustments, or sound emphasis (eg Emphasize narration). Emphasize narration is useful if you have narration and music at the same time, so that the viewer can hear the narration clearly. It is also helpful in cases of loud static noises.

Insert Music or Videos/Photos

You can find this option in the home bar. Simply select the corresponding choice and then the music will be overlay with the video, so make sure to drag the music to where you want it to begin. Inserting videos/photos will NOT overlap with the pre-existing video!

Captions (From home tab)

1. Adjust text duration and when the text will pop up.2. Adjust font and colour of the text as well as the size.3. Editing the content of the text, such as removing a word or adding a word.4. Adjusting paragraph alignment and transparency of the text.5. How the text will enter, such as swiping in, rotating in, exploding in, fading in, etc.

Title and Credits (Home tab)

Similar to captions, they have the same options and adjustments you can play around with (see prev. slide). Titles and credits will have a default black background but you can always change it in the background colour button above the start time and set duration bar. You can only have one title and one credits, but you can have multiple captions.

Rendering (Saving) MovieThis is from the home tab. Select the option you want the project to be saved in. Make sure to look out for the resolution; longer resolution will take longer times. Beside save movie, there is social media buttons (options). That means you will directly publish it on eg. YouTube instead of saving it in your hard drive as a video format. Uploading takes longer than saving to a hard drive!

Additional Tips

Save the project normally (File, save) or save on the top left, in case you want to edit the project quickly again!

Editing audio is not convenient in movie maker. Edit the audio in audacity first (recommended) and then save it, then drag it into

movie maker.

In the home tab, you can rotate images or videos!

Make sure to reserve from 30min to 2 hours for video rendering!

If you wish to upload the video to YouTube, keep it under ten minutes.